The Downside of Being Pragmatic
by KarmaPop
Summary: On the fateful night where Belle saves her dad by outing the Beast, she nearly kills him in the process. What if Belle realized that showing everyone a roaring beastman would be a pretty good way to get him lynched and kept her mouth shut?
1. Between Rock Bottom and Someplace Lower

Written in an extreme bout of insomnia, and heaping adult cynicism upon something I used to love as a kid. Please, please forgive me. :)

The Downside of Being Pragmatic

Chapter 1: Caught Between Rock Bottom and Someplace Lower Than That

It had been a year since she had last spoken to her father.

It had been a week since she had heard that he may be, in fact, quite ill.

And fittingly, it had been only yesterday that Gaston had broken the news -quite ill had taken a turn for the worse to quite dead.

And it was only a minute ago that she had arrived at the ramshackle house she used to call home, hesitating at the threshold as she anxiously played with the doorknob, toying over whether or not she should actually go inside.

Belle took a deep breath, and opened the door to find the place to be an even filthier mess than she had expected. Gizmos and gadgets aplenty occupied every single inch of available table and counter space, whozits and whatzits galore littered the floor. Upon closer examination, Belle realized one whozit in particular was an incredibly old, incredibly used chamberpot, and she quickly danced around it with disdain, heading for her bedroom.

This had thankfully remained undisturbed- her father had at least accorded her that dignity. Slinging a battered duffel she had brought with her from town on the equally worn bed, she scrounged underneath her mattress, and came up with a little bit of money, more than enough to buy food for a week or so. She really didn't known why she'd need it where she was going, but better safe than sorry.

There was nothing but a few books full of fairytales in her bookshelf, and she wouldn't be needing them. It would only depress her. Instead she made a move for her wardrobe—which was crammed full of her usual blue dress, white apron ensemble, but if she dug further, there were a few more coins, and more importantly, a coat that had a reasonable chance of getting her to the castle not completely frostbitten from head to toe.

Last, but not least, she kneeled close to the side of her bed, flipped over the seemingly innocent rug, and pried up a loose floorboard, revealing the mirror. He promised her it could show her anything she wished to see, but she hadn't really wished for anything much these days.

But times had changed, and if she didn't make her decision now it would be made for her in the most permanent way possible. Belle gently picked up the mirror, and asked it, for the first time, a favor.

"Show me the Beast."

The mirror flashed green in her hands, and images began to rapidly flash across its surface. What she saw didn't surprise her, indeed she had expected it. The Beast was not a paragon of mental stability, even in his good days. God, what was she doing?

"Mirror, off!" she said, and the mirror did not obey. She shook it a bit. Still nothing, the peepshow just kept on going. Frustrated, she shoved the mirror in the bag along with the money, and took one last, long look around her bedroom. Tears should have come, but they didn't, and so it was with a decided lack of fanfare that Belle left her childhood home forever.

Almost.

Her father's machine, the vicious looking, rickety thing that only cut wood and that was it- was still out in the front yard, collecting rust and being as useless as ever. Belle couldn't help but wonder if any of this would have happened if it hadn't been for this thing. It took all of a minute for Belle to finish thinking and reach the conclusion that, yes, this machine was the sole reason for all of the horrendous things that had happened in the past year, terrible happenings that showed no signs of letting up at any time in the foreseeable future.

Screw running through the hills and singing as her last hurrah at the homestead, Belle preferred to finish things with a little revenge.

By the time the townsfolk got out to the dead inventor's cottage a few hours later, the blaze had moved from machine to stable to house- and because of an inopportune breeze and a few kegs of gunpowder the old kook kept in his basement, it took almost 30 men the entire night and the better part of the next day to put the raging inferno out.

The inventor's daughter stayed only long enough to appreciate her handiwork, and she and the horse were far, far away before the first explosion from the tiny cottage claimed the life of the baker.

It was really better that she didn't know, because in truth she loved his tray like always. Maybe even more than the books she always borrowed.

The second explosion offed the librarian.

Belle, in a blissful state of ignorance of the havoc she had wrought, scratched her ear in response.

After several hours hard riding, one year of abject suffering, and a lifetime of innocence down the drain, she was almost back.


	2. No Man in Town Half as Manly

Thanks so much for reviewing, those who did. I really, really appreciate it.  I love Disney, and I adore the movie- but sometimes I just can't help myself. This should have a happy ending, but hey, everyone's gotta work for it right?

Chapter 2: No Man in Town Half as Manly

For what must have been the millionth time since he had made the mistake of forcing that shrew to marry him, Gaston laid in his bed and cried. Between great, gulping sobs for air he cursed her name, her beauty which used to be so like his own, and his own foolishness for not seeing that she'd be the death of him.

Eventually, Gaston's breathing slowed, his eyes red and swollen from the tears that still threatened to roll down the swell cleft in his chin and fall on a heaving bicep he was now using to drag a bottle on whiskey on the sidetable closer to his ever questing lips. Gaston and alcohol had never been too far from one another even before the marriage, now they were inseparable.

Gaston's recent crying jag was the result of spending two days in the wreckage of his wife's former home combined with the pressure of getting back and finding her not-so-mysteriously absent. He knew it had been her from the time he saw the first plume of black smoke roil down into the town from the cottage, and he had also known that he was unlikely to find her at home. She was calculating, that one.

Gaston put the mug back on the table and heaved a deep sigh. If the boys could see him now. But they didn't. Gaston was an utterly broken creature, and if he wasn't at a bar drinking through what little money he had left, he was lying in bed, letting once hulking muscles turn to around 40 pounds of fat, and just generally bemoaning his fate.

The wedding was relatively uneventful, all it took was a chilling look from the warden of the insane asylum to shut both dad and daughter up but good. The old man loved his Belle, but he also seemed to love not rotting away in a straitjacket for the rest of his life as well. Gaston didn't begrudge him that, and he had thought Belle wouldn't either, at least initially. The words exchanged between her and her father at the wedding, while guarded, harbored none of the loathing that would characterize Belle's future dealings with crazy old Maurice.

Hindsight's 20/20 though, and in his more lucid moments Gaston knew that he had driven the wedge between them, by doing something he probably shouldn't have on the honeymoon.

She refused him. Again and again. He shouldn't have been surprised. But he was, stupidly enough he was, as Gaston was a champion of rationalization and denial. After much cajoling she still wasn't amenable to it, and, as he had tried to tell himself again and again since that night, he had no other recourse. Gaston was above physically forcing the issue, but he also wasn't afraid to go back to basics. He let her know that she could go ahead and refuse, and they didn't have to do anything that night--- but first thing in the morning Maurice had a one-way ticket to the looney bin.

The words hung in the air for a moment, and the shock barely registered on Belle's face before she ran to the bathroom and closed herself in for half an hour. In the interim, Gaston, feeling just a tad guilty, drank half a bottle of champagne to drown himself for a bit, and it did the trick quite nicely.

At last Belle came out, and without a word or a glance, went to the bed- a beautiful zombie. The marriage was consummated, and when he woke up Belle was dead.

In her place was his wife, a horrible monster of a woman who sucked all of the air out of the room, regularly shattered plates against the wall and threw furniture through the window, and who could no longer be controlled with threats against her father. The morning after the honeymoon she disappeared from the house for a few hours, and when she came back let him know that a) she hated her father, and b) now that they were tied together for all of eternity, she'd teach him just how long that was.

Oh God, all this reminiscing just wanted to make Gaston drink more. Staggering out of bed, he stumbled to the liquor cabinet, conveniently only a few feet away. Gaston liked to combine his twin hobbies of drinking and lying down, so its traditionally off-kilter location suited him just fine. Opening it up, a piece of paper fluttered to the floor. He picked it up and read it with eyes blurred by the drink.

_Gaston-_

_I'm putting this where I'll know you'll find it. We're done. There's someone else. Don't cry too hard._

_Belle_

For a moment, Gaston sat still in shocked silence. She was leaving him. What the hell? Shouldn't it be the other way around? She was leaving him?? The best man in this whole godforsaken town? Who did she think she was? And for who? WHO?

Rage set in. A year of humiliation, of cutting remarks and hateful glances and several highly suspicious struggles with food poisoning had cut him down to half a man, and she left him for someone else?

He'd kill him. And then, maybe then, he'd just kill her too. Enough was enough, it was time to reclaim his manhood- Gaston swiftly rose to his feet, determined to defend his own honor.

He got up perhaps a bit too swiftly, however, and the whiskey hit him like a freight train. A moment passed, and then another, and then Gaston crumpled onto the floor and had a brief thought that maybe this wasn't the best time to enact his revenge before passing out.

Maybe another time.


End file.
